


into being

by kurgaya



Series: RUMBLEBIRDS [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Don't copy to another site, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, M/M, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-06-03 20:23:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19471501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurgaya/pseuds/kurgaya
Summary: Bringing Yamato here was a mistake. If he’d taken the time to consider his options, he could’ve settled on something - anything! - other than Konoha. He should’ve dragged Yamato straight back to the Nine-Tails; that’s what anyone else would’ve done. It’s what Kakashi did to himself. And yet he brought Yamato here, to Gai, to the same place that the Nine-Tails sent him many hundreds of years ago.[Magic!AU. Some things come into life another way].





	into being

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EgregiousDerp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EgregiousDerp/gifts).



> FINALLY

By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me.  
I sizzled in his blue volts like a desert prophet.  
The nights snapped out of sight like a lizard’s eyelid:  
A world of bald white days in a shadeless socket.  
A vulturous boredom pinned me in this tree.  
If he were I, he would do what I did.

\-- _The Hanging Man_ by Sylvia Plath

Autumn reigns over the heart of the Foxwood, snaring the earth and the trees in-between slumber and wake. The leaves are ever-red here, gory and bright, and the thin branches that shed them number in their thousands. The Foxwood is untouched by fire and yet it seems to burn, and Kakashi treads carefully over downed wood and the ancient, amber fungi that infester these trees. This place truly is the Land of Fire’s namesake, and Kakashi would like for nothing more than to see black sky and feel the rain again, and spread his wings beyond this timeless beasts’ ground of a cage. But first, he must locate the beast itself, which is easier said than done when he’s slogging through brambles and mud _on foot_.

“Worse than the Nara forest,” Kakashi mutters, swatting a low branch away. The trees are tall and wicked, thriving on fox’s breath and blood. Or so the legends say. Kakashi has lived longer than most things in the world, but not the Foxwood and not the Beast that dwells inside it, and not the whispers of the people that speak of sacrifice and fear.

Gai might recall a time when the Nine Beasts were young, but then Gai’s memory is terrible, and Kakashi wouldn’t be surprised if he could recount little at all.

“Idiot,” Kakashi says, reaching for the golden feather around his neck. It’s a comfort, especially in times such as this. He wonders what the Nine-Tails will think of it. He wonders if he’ll even _find_ the damn Beast in the first place.

He follows the deepening trees, listening for any sign of the Nine-Tails. He can’t remember how long he searched for last time, but back then, he didn’t care for the hours or days. He’d sought the Nine-Tails out for a different purpose - not, that is, that he’d gotten his way. Kakashi can’t say that he’s grateful - and he _certainly_ isn’t in the Nine-Tails’ debt - because many things would’ve been different had the Beast done what he’d asked, and almost all of those things would’ve been good.

Kakashi sighs, loathe to remember, and somewhere in the Foxwood, Fire’s most terrible beast sighs back. Its breath shakes the leaves from the trees and drops them like ashes to the ground. Kakashi waits for the forest to settle before turning to the source, walking over the freshly crisp soil. Winter will never come here, and neither will summer nor spring. One day, the dead leaves will pile so high that they’ll be mountains. He might still be alive then. It’s a terrifying thought.

Some hours pass. The Foxwood sighs with a slow rhythm and Kakashi follows the breeze. The Nine-Tails must be sleeping; perhaps soon the forest will quake with a snore. The thought would amuse Kakashi at any other time, but it’s he who must wake the Beast. He would give anything to feel a storm at his fingertips; to throw lightning down and see how the Nine-Tails likes _that_.

Gai would love this place. The Foxwood is neither old nor young, just like him. There is a beauty in this burning wood that Kakashi can appreciate from afar, but Gai would love the reds and the golds up close, laugh in the warmth of the air, and lie in the rose-coloured moss in the sun.

Kakashi can never bring him here. The golden feather under his robes warms at the thought.

Something stirs far away. He pauses by a felled tree, hearing the gnash of monstrous teeth through the air. Mushrooms wobble on nearby tree-trunks and the leaves quiver as though they, too, rouse from a decade-long nap. Kakashi purses his lips, preferring the silent lightning and bird-chirps in the rain. The next breath through the trees is one of laughter, and Kakashi looks up as the Foxwood’s amber-orange backdrop shifts and stretches and moves, fog becoming fur and sunlight glinting from a gigantic snout of teeth. Far to the east, almost out of sight, nine great tails lash like snakes across the dirt, and Kakashi catches a glimpse of two colossal, ruby-like eyes as they disappear up into the canopy.

The Nine-Tails smiles and it’s a most terrible thing.

“Wretched bird,” the Nine-Tails says, as it had many hundreds of years ago. _You think it’s that easy?_ it had laughed then, hissing steam and fur aflame. _I’m not the one who gets to kill you. There exists a flame in this world that burns brighter than mine. Ask it to destroy you and it will do so in the only way that matters._

“I see you’re still wearing that mask,” says the Nine-Tails, referring to the black fabric pulled up over Kakashi’s neck and the lower half of his face. Kakashi’s been wearing it for so long that it’s as familiar as his feathers and this seems to intrigue the Nine-Tails. “Do you have something else to conceal this time, I wonder?”

Kakashi says nothing, holding the Nine-Tails’ gaze. He wears illusions like a second skin, a mask on-top of a mask. Few people have ever seen him without one. The Nine-Tails can probably see through them, but Kakashi can’t be sure. He keeps his left eye shut just in case - his poppy-red eye, the eye he lost and the eye he gained - and the smile of the Nine-Tails grows. It’s a creature almost as old as the land itself, and nothing in Fire escapes its notice. The other lands - Earth and Wind and those over the sea - are beyond its gaze, and Kakashi isn’t about to tempt fate by revealing what he stole in the Land of Meadows, just beyond the border.

The Nine-Tail sighs, impatient in the face of Kakashi’s disinterest. It lays its head back down upon its paws, tails rising like flames behind it. “I see you’re not so easy to rile anymore. Pity.”

The last time they met, Kakashi was new to this world, thrown down from the thunder and struck upon the earth. He was flightless, then, and used a name that wasn’t his own. Now, Kakashi inclines his head, and his hair is shorter and his eyes mismatched, and he wears a promise around his neck like a jewel. “I’ve come seeking information.”

“Yes, I know,” drawls the Nine-Tails, rocking its head as though debating whether to eat him. It won’t, Kakashi knows, but it’s clearly enjoying the idea. “Information like that comes at a price.”

“Name it.”

“Do something for me and I will tell you what I know.”

Kakashi’s magic stirs in outrage but he shoves it down. It won’t do to smite this forest; even if the Nine-Tails can’t kill him, it will gladly have him suffer. Kakashi isn’t deluded enough to believe he could best one of the Nine Beasts anyway. “I’m not some messenger hawk. You think you can command me just because I was born in your land?”

The Nine-Tails laughs, expelling steam through the canopy. Nearby tree-bark scalds black. Kakashi feels his skin sizzle, white lightning flickering between his feathers to protect him. The Nine-Tails bears its diamond teeth. “You were not _born_ at all,” it sneers. “I know how you came into being. You think you can hide it, but you wear his face well.”

Kakashi inhales sharply. “Don’t you speak of him,” he hisses; and he’s nothing to this Beast, he knows, he’s a fledgling in the jaws of a fox, but Kakashi grits his teeth and tilts back his head anyway, refusing to cower. “Name your task.”

The Nine-Tails grins, cinders flicking from its fur. “It’s simple enough. Something has disturbed this forest. Find it - then I will answer your questions.”

 _I’ll disturb this forest_ , Kakashi thinks, grinding his teeth. “‘What do you mean by ‘something’?”

“A magic has awoken that should not be awake. Do with it what you will, but it cannot remain here. Then return to me. Are you up to the task, Thunder-Thrown? Or will you fly away again?”

“I’ll find it,” Kakashi pledges, unwilling to leave this forsaken forest empty-handed. Last time, he came with nothing and left with even less, and he refuses to let that happen again. There are more important things in this world than his pride, and if he must barter with a Beast for them, then so be it.

“Good,” says the Nine-Tails, settling down to sleep once again. The forest burns in sunset colours around it, and its eyes appear ablaze as it closes them away. “I’ll be waiting.”

Despite the Nine-Tails’ lacking instructions, the source of its ire isn’t difficult to find. At first, Kakashi assumes some dark magic has infested this wood; he knows dark magic, he lives it, wields it, hurls it down from the sky. Something truly malicious must have awoken in the Foxwood to rouse one of the demonic Beasts. Kakashi hopes it isn’t another of his kind, a fledgling of thunder and shadow and the downpour of grief, but he knows it’s a real possibility with the Nine-Tails’ sense of humour. Anything else would be preferable - _anything_. He’s already woken up one Tailed Beast today, so he might as well wake up two.

It won’t be another Tailed Beast, if the legends are to be believed. But Kakashi can hope. Maybe this new Tailed Beast will overthrow the Nine-Tails and rescue Kakashi’s sanity, and the thought is so absurd that all he can do is laugh.

The trees close in around him, their bark black with fox-fire and their leaves aghast. Unease zips down Kakashi’s back, ruffling his unseen feathers. He draws his cloak tighter about himself, trying to ignore the Foxwood’s many eyes. It’s probably best not to think such thoughts until he’s countries and oceans away.

There’s little evidence of a dark magic at play. The air is hot and heavy, and this ever-dying forest is seething with life. The further Kakashi walks from the centre of the Foxwood, the more that wildlife appears. The deer here are stupid unlike those that inhabit the Nara forest, and of a more cowardly disposition. The birds are quieter and more afraid. Kakashi spots a fox skirting along a stream, its paws dark and caked in mud. It pauses at the sight of him, black ears twitching. Something in its eyes compels him to move along.

Kakashi follows the water up-stream. Red and orange leaves float down, bumping into stones and around the tree-roots protruding from the bank. He fishes one from the water, checking for unnatural signs of decay. When nothing seems amiss, he throws it back and continues on, trekking slowly along until a flash of green catches his eye.

Another leaf bobs down the stream, but this one is lush and healthy, almost the colour of those awful jumpsuits that Gai likes to wear. Kakashi crouches down to retrieve it but notices another - and another, two, then three, all drifting down along the water. Something so green doesn’t belong in the Foxwood. Curious, for dark magic so rarely produces life, Kakashi hastens his step, slipping along the muddy bank, over mushrooms, and hopping the fallen trees.

The stream curves, leading him south. Another sound rises up over the splash of the water. Kakashi draws his tantō, just in case. Fox’s fire burns bright with illusions, and he wouldn’t put it past the Nine-Tails to trick him into danger. The young boy crying at the edge of the stream doesn’t _seem_ dangerous, but there are green leaves piled up around him and brambles in his hair, and he’s in the heart of the Foxwood, which is certainly the place of all places to lose one’s way.

“Who are you?” Kakashi demands, and the boy’s head snaps up like the whip of a tree-branch, revealing a round, blotchy-red face, and deer-like eyes. The boy’s covered in dirt and small cuts, and looks as though he fought a round with a tree. He’s also completely naked. The unusually green leaves provide some modesty, but there’s nothing to explain what the boy is doing here. “Answer me. How did you get here?”

The boy shakes his head, losing twigs from his hair. “I - I don’t - I don’t -” is all he manages before pointing some distance away from the stream. His hands are as spindly as the trees around them and his fingertips are wet with blood. He fists his hands into his hair and emits a painful sound, but he doesn’t look up again when Kakashi presses for information.

“Fine,” Kakashi says, marching past the boy. He can’t feel any dark magic in the air but still his lightning magic twitches restlessly, jumping about beneath his skin. Nothing green should grow in this forest and yet the boy has found those leaves from _somewhere_. Perhaps he carried them with him from wherever he came from - except he’s _naked_ and _crying_ , and Kakashi curses the Nine-Tails for sending him on this stupid task as he strides over to the mounds of dirt, overturned earth, and the torn-open grave.

There’s no headstone, but there’s a tree towering over the grave, its roots bulbous and distorted and plunging into the ground. The spiralling symbol of Konoha is etched into the bark, and Kakashi stops before the open grave, seeing the tree roots twisting their way inside. More leaves line the bottom of the grave, each as green as the ones from the stream, and great, stake-like spikes of wood jut up through the earth like a crown of antlers, winding their way up to the sky.

Kakashi turns back to the _thing_ by the stream. “You didn’t come from this.”

“I did!” the boy-thing cries, kicking more leaves into the stream as he twists around. The brambles are _attached_ to his hair, and his eyes are as dark as the depths of the grave as he argues: “I woke up and it was all on-top of me and I shouted but no-one came and -”

“No,” Kakashi interrupts, snarling lightning. Blue volts spark at his fingertips. He should zap the boy-thing and throw him back underground. “ _No_. I know whose grave this is and it’s not _yours_. Who _are_ you?”

“I don’t _know_ ,” wails the boy-thing, and the sound is white-hot fire in Kakashi’s chest, a feeling so familiar but from so long ago. He’s felt this panic before - he’s felt the _boy’s_ panic before. “I don’t know who I am! How can I not _know_?”

 _The same way I didn’t_ , Kakashi thinks, backing away from Hashirama’s grave.

“Where are we?” the boy-thing asks, angrier now, defensive. Dozens of roots burst up from the ground, curling around his wrists and arms, slithering like thick, green veins across his body. “Who are you?”

The nearby trees creak and bend, lurching forward like a hundred arms reaching to snare Kakashi’s cloak. He stands utterly still, rubbing the sparks away from his fingertips. It won’t do to smite this forest, he reminds himself, no matter what strange creatures it unearths from the ground. If this were the Nara forest, he would spread his wings and pour thunder down onto this place, open his eyes to the lightning, and soak his feathers in the rain. But the Foxwood is fire and smoke, and the Nine-Tails would incinerate him in the sky.

This boy-thing, though, is something else. Something that has disturbed this forest. Kakashi resists the urge to reveal his poppy-red eye and instead looks upon the boy-thing with his own eye. Beyond the rage and the magic and the _wrongness_ of the boy-thing, he sees a child dragged into the white days of this world, awoken by a fist in his hair and thrown into life; a child like Kakashi, not-born from another, nameless and yet cursed by a name. The boy looks nothing like Hashirama but his magic’s the same. Kakashi listens to the tree-leaves quiver and hears the boy’s voice shake in time.

“Name yourself,” Kakashi says, wanting to be rid of this boy. The Nine-Tails is right - he can’t stay here. This forest is no place for Hashirama’s magic; it’s why he was buried here, his magic sealed in an eternal sleep. Apparently it _wasn’t_ so eternal, given that the child by the stream has leaves growing out of his hair.

“What?” says the boy, not-Hashirama, scrubbing tears from his cheeks.

Kakashi has to look away. He can’t bear seeing himself in this muddy, magic-clone of a boy. “Name yourself and then you’ll know who you are.”

The trees back away. The roots cease their squirming under the ground.

“What kind of name?” asks not-Hashirama.

Kakashi rolls his eyes. “One you _like_ , I suppose,” he drawls, hoping the boy says _anything_ but Hashirama. If he does, then he and Kakashi aren’t as similar as they seem.

The boy considers it for a moment, still naked and still covered in earth. Now that the trees are calm, Kakashi pulls off his cloak and approaches slowly, glad to further the distance between himself and the grave. The boy hardly seems to notice Kakashi’s approach, but then he looks up when they’re barely a foot apart, dark eyes wide and so unlike Hashirama’s.

“I like Yamato?” he says, phrasing it like a question, asking as though anyone but himself has a right to give him a name.

“Whatever you want is fine,” Kakashi replies, dumping the cloak down onto the boy. “You can’t stay in the forest, so put this on. Gai will ask questions if I hand you over without any clothes.”

Gai may or may not be pleased about this, but it’s always hard to tell. He’s never turned Kakashi away though, not once in all their years. Kakashi isn’t above using Gai’s ridiculous heart to his advantage.

“Who’s Gai?” Yamato asks, and though he opens his mouth to ask even more, something about the cloak seems to distract him. He runs his fingers over it, along the feathery hem. He traces the black embroidery and says, as though he has any right to know, “This feels like _rain_.” And then he laughs, shrugging himself into the cloak. “It’s freezing!”

“It’ll offer some protection from this wood,” Kakashi explains, missing the cloak already. “ _Not_ that we’re staying. Get up.”

Yamato doesn’t _get up_ so much as the tree-roots surge up from the ground and _push_ him up. He wobbles a little bit, stumbling through the leaves, but eventually he steadies himself without another part of his forsaken forest needing to intervene.

“Stay close - and don’t trust anything in this place,” Kakashi says, walking away from the stream and their path back to the Nine-Tails, and ignoring the shudder of the wood as it wonders where he’s heading. He’ll have to report back to the Nine-Tails eventually, but not with Yamato, of this he is sure. He sheathes his tantō. His questions will have to wait. Two beings who can control this forest should probably never meet, and Kakashi isn’t stupid enough to introduce them.

“What about you?” Yamato asks, following along behind. Kakashi’s cloak drags along at his heels. “What name did you pick?”

Kakashi says nothing. He leads the way to Konoha, to Gai, to the only place that won’t kill Yamato on sight, and counts to infinity instead of striking this foxfire forest down.

The trees of the Foxwood eventually thin into grasslands, meadows, and spring. A red and black gate marks the boundary of the forest like a great vermillion guardian warning of this sacred place. Fox-like emblems decorate the top of the gate, ever-smiling with sinister eyes. It alone stands on the cusp of seasons, the Land of Fire’s patchwork time before it, and the Foxwood’s eternal autumn at its back. The Nara forest has a gate like this to the south, but Kakashi doesn’t despair passing under that as he does this towering monument of the fox. The other lands of this world, too, have sacred dominions for their Beasts. The watery forest of the Five-Tails is kinder than the Foxwood. Kakashi can’t say he likes any of the Tailed Beasts, but the Five-Tails, at least, doesn’t actively wish to torment him.

Yamato drags his feet to a stop beside Kakashi, his head low and eyes heavy with weariness. They have been walking for hours. The Land of Fire’s sun warms this drawn-out spring evening in a sky of blues and pinks. Behind them, the Foxwood is as auburn as it always will be, and Kakashi is glad to finally turn away.

“We’ll be there by nightfall,” Kakashi predicts, tipping his head up away from the sun. His magic unrolls within him, cooling the evening air around them and darkening the white-pink clouds overhead. “I think Konoha is due some rain.”

Yamato yawns. Flowers have gathered around his feet as though to cushion him if he falls. “I think I’ll like the rain.”

“Good,” Kakashi says, almost feeling guilty at tearing this earthly boy-spirit-thing away from the ground. Thunder rumbles as a storm closes around them, consuming the sun and the romantic dusk. He spreads his wings - finally, _finally!_ \- and rids himself of this human masquerade, cloaking himself in storm-clouds and pulling lightning down from the sky. Up over the forest gate he looms, casting the Foxwood’s autumn into the darkness of winter. Yamato seems even tinier now, and Kakashi shakes out his black and white feathers, feeling smug at Yamato’s open-mouthed awe.

“Get on,” Kakashi orders, even as Yamato shakes his head and backs away. “The wind will carry us faster than your weeds."

This seems to vex the goldenrods at Yamato’s feet. Kakashi hasn’t an issue with carrying Yamato in his talons instead, but he imagines the suggestion will be met with even greater fear. Humans are delicate. And anyway, Kakashi isn’t the most gentle of beings. He’s not Gai - and he’s _certainly_ not Dai. Kakashi is lightning and rain and he'll strike anything that comes too near.

Yamato climbs on. His reluctance is uncharacteristic of Hashirama, but his stubbornness is Senju to the bone. He even _feels_ small upon Kakashi’s back, and he twists his hands in Kakashi’s feathers a little too tightly, peering nervously at the ground. The grass and the daisies wave back, more alive than they should be, more animate than Hashirama could ever compel them to be.

 _What am I_ , Yamato must be thinking, and Kakashi remembers a time when he wondered the same.

Kakashi rids himself of that thought. “Don’t fall off,” he says, and Yamato shrieks as they take to the sky.

The village where Gai lives, in Kakashi’s opinion, is less of a _village_ than it ever has been, but the people of Konoha like to cling to their history just as easily as they throw it away. A great wall encircles the village, broken only by four red-wood gates and the Mountain of Mages to the north. Carved from the mountainside are the faces of the four High Mages to date. It’s the dumbest monument Kakashi’s ever seen in the world, but if Yamato were awake, then perhaps he’d like to look upon it. He fell asleep some time ago, hands still clutching Kakashi's feathers. As for Kakashi, he soars over the mountain high out of reach, and if he can’t bear to look at the carving of Minato’s face, then Minato (being dead) will never have to know.

Gai actually lives just beyond the village gate, in the clutches of the Nara forest to the south. Kakashi uses the storm to cloak himself as he swoops down over the southern gate, beating his wings in time with the rain. Yamato rouses at the village lights. He makes a sound of fear as Kakashi descends, but Kakashi’s not _actually_ heartless enough to let him fall off.

The Nine-Tails would be pleased, though.

“Gai lives by the Nara shrine,” Kakashi says, not that Yamato will be able to see much through the rain. He also won’t know what the Nara shrine _looks_ like, so Kakashi’s not sure why he bothered opening his mouth.

“I think I see it,” Yamato replies, which Kakashi very much doubts. They circle the southern gate again, slowly descending, close enough now that Kakashi’s tail-feathers could shock the trees. Yamato’s voice rises in curiosity. “What’s that light?”

“It’s just the -”

An explosion of kaleidoscopic fire is Kakashi’s only warning - and to be fair, it’s a rather _unavoidable_ warning - before something slams into him from below. Gold and pink light erupts in the sky, so hot that it sizzles away the rain, and so bright that Kakashi tumbles blind through his own storm, the wind rushing around his wings to catch him. There’s a belated roar of _DYNAMIC ENTRY!_ and then whooping, victorious laughter. Kakashi almost doesn’t hear the scream as Yamato loses purchase and plummets towards the Nara forest. The borrowed cloak whips up past Kakashi’s face and fear seizes his chest as he twists to catch Yamato - and misses - and dives to snatch him with his beak -

Gai catches him. Yamato’s _thwumps_ down onto his fiery back, cushioned by his plume of iridescent feathers. Gai’s eight wings flap at different times as he steadies himself, the largest flicking fire from their tips. The cindering specks sparkle and fade like stars into the night. But more like a sun, himself, Gai swoops down from the cover of Kakashi’s clouds and into the trees below, his eternal flame burning through even the darkest of darkness.

Kakashi follows him down, landing in the clearing behind Gai’s house. The rain ceases as he folds in his wings. Gai lifts his gold-crowned head towards the sky as the storm dispels, crest-feathers curling as though trapped in the static. Kakashi sighs and drops back into his human disguise, shoving a hand through his silvery hair.

“You always have to make an entrance, don’t you?”

Gai shifts his weight on his gigantic talons, coloured too-red to blush but abashed all the same. “Forgive me, Rival, I was just so excited to see you! I wasn’t aware that you had a - ah, um - a friend.”

“Hardly a friend,” Kakashi says, side-stepping smoothly as Gai rearranges his ridiculous number of wings. “Let him down.”

Gai hunkers down, revealing Yamato’s shell-shocked face. The Nara forest seems to lean in closer to investigate, but it knows better than to near Gai’s flames. Unfortunately, Yamato is once-again naked, and Kakashi despairs at where his cloak may have ended up.

“Who’s this?” Gai asks, as Yamato slides down from his back. “What ever have you done with his clothes?”

Yamato scampers over to hide behind Kakashi’s significantly smaller and less fiery back. Seeing Kakashi and Gai now, anybody else would doubt that Kakashi could do anything against such a creature - and they’d be right, really, except that his very nature means Gai won’t hurt him at all. Gai doesn’t like hurting anybody, in fact, but Kakashi lets Yamato hide behind him with only a roll of his eyes.

“He came into being in the Foxwood.”

Gai startles, head twitching like a songbird. He's a magnificent creature, worthy of rivalling the sun, but instead he's lowered himself to challenging Kakashi for the rest of his lives. Kakashi doesn't understand what Gai sees in him, but there must be something worth chasing since Gai gifted him a feather to wear around his neck.

“The Foxwood?" Gai echoes, shimmering gold and green. "Isn’t that where -?”

Kakashi resists the urge to sigh again. This isn’t a conversation he planned to be having now, or ever, and especially not with Gai. He’d hoped to simply drop Yamato on Gai’s doorstep and then vanish back into the storm, but he should’ve known it wouldn’t be as easy as that. “Yes. It sent me to look for him.”

“What were you -?”

“Are you going to stand there and interrogate me or will you fetch Yamato some clothes?” Kakashi snaps, pulling the poor, naked boy out from behind him to further his point.

It does the trick. Gai blazes back into his human form in a burst of fire, shrinking down to a man just a little taller than Kakashi. He must be eighteen now, in this life, and he stands broad-shouldered and proud. He's still wearing that ridiculous green jumpsuit because _of course he is_ , and it squeaks from the rain as he thrusts out his arm, his hand closed into a ‘thumbs up’. “You're right, of course! Come in, I’ll make some tea!”

He vaults up onto the porch and into the back door in two tremendous leaps. Kakashi considers just nudging Yamato inside and being done with it, but upon attempting to do so, he finds that Yamato has quite literally rooted himself into the ground.

“You’re going to be a problem, aren’t you?” Kakashi drawls, lifting Yamato up by his armpits and hauling him inside. The roots stretch and snap, receding like worms back under the earth. Kakashi plonks Yamato down onto the _engawa_ and remembers, with no small amount of regret, that Hashirama could bend even floorboards to his will. Yamato doesn’t appear to possess such an urge right now, but he refuses to let go of Kakashi’s robes so the result is pretty much the same.

"Is this your friend Gai?" Yamato whispers, peeking with doe-like eyes around the house. Gai isn’t materialistic by any means and the house is sparse but for necessities, but the few things that Gai does hold onto, he treasures. Yamato stretches up on tiptoes to get a better look at the art on the walls; sketches and paintings, many of them faded from hundreds of years. It’s Kakashi’s job to pack up Gai’s possessions after each burning of the final gate, when there’s nothing left of Gai’s current life but ash and flame. There’s a small sketch of Gai’s father in the house somewhere. If nothing else, Kakashi ensures that he pockets that sketch until he can pass it on again.

There’s an _AH-HA!_ from further through the house. Yamato jumps about a foot in the air.

Kakashi’s never been one to comfort, but he lays a hand on Yamato’s shoulder anyway. Gai is _too much_ for most people, let alone for someone on the very day they’ve been born. "He won't hurt you. It's not in his nature."

“What is he?”

 _A pain in the ass_ , Kakashi thinks as Gai bounds down the hallway and presents a rather dusty but thankfully _not_ neon-green robe to Yamato. It’s still green though, but muted, the colour of the Nara forest at night, and Gai crouches to help loop the sash around Yamato’s bony waist.

“There! Much better! Now, how about some tea? I’m sure you’ll have a tale to tell about the Foxwood, ey?”

Yamato glances at Kakashi for something - reassurance, maybe, which is absolutely _absurd_. When Kakashi says nothing, he instead looks up to Gai’s gleaming smile and his stupid bowl-cut hair. “I - I woke up in a grave?” Yamato replies, as though unsure as to whether this will be exciting enough for a being as vibrant and powerful as Gai.

Gai - who periodically combusts into fire and rises from his ashes - tips his head back and laughs. “The best of us do! That’s nothing to be ashamed of! Why, you could even do what I do and carry your own grave with you wherever you go! It’s much more convenient, don't you think?”

“Err,” says Yamato, which is the correct response.

Kakashi scrubs a hand down his face and sighs.

Yamato nods off halfway through his cup of tea. Gai bundles him up and sets him down to sleep in the guest bedroom. Kakashi lingers but the rain returns before Gai does, pitter-pattering like a song trying to lure him away. Kakashi twiddles a mug around in circles and then cleans the dishes, sweeping up the wayward plant-life that fell from Yamato’s head. A spark of magic disintegrates a leaf into nothing, but the daffodil he twirls about its stem before setting on the counter to die.

The Nine-Tails is waiting. If Kakashi’s going to leave, then he has to leave now. The golden feather around his neck burns but he ignores it, casting up a gale to carry him away. He steps out onto the back porch just as another _shoji_ slides open, and Gai smiles as he exits the guest room, his slippers sliding across the wood. Kakashi has only a second to spread his wings and fly away but then Gai just sits down on the _engawa_ , and without the protection of the storm-shutters, he’s at the mercy of the rain.

Kakashi doesn’t move.

“I’m not sure why you brought him to me,” Gai says, quieter now, Yamato sleeping just feet away. This life of Gai’s is still young and yet he’s centuries old - older than Kakashi, even when he’s younger. He looks more like Dai than he ever has done, especially when he smiles. “But I’m glad you did. It’s good to see you again.”

“I’m not staying.”

Gai seems not to hear, kicking his legs out into the rain. He’s going to lose a slipper at this rate and Kakashi won’t stop the storm to save it. “Are you paying Kushina and Naruto a visit? I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to see you! But perhaps at a more reasonable hour -?"

“I said I’m _not staying_ ,” Kakashi snaps, lighting up the sky.

Gai inclines his head - and then inclines it away, rocking it from side-to-side. His face scrunches in thought as though there’s _anything_ to think about. “Because of the fox?”

“Ye - no,” Kakashi replies, refusing to admit that the Nine-Tails has any sway over his life. Except, the Nine-Tails _is_ his excuse not to stay (but not his reason, not his ultimatum), and he flounders for something else to say. “Because of - my cloak. I have to find my cloak.”

 _Lame_ , Kakashi thinks, cursing himself. Even Obito could’ve come up with something better than that.

Gai harrumphs, rubbing his chin. He doesn’t appear to notice the hollow excuse. “If it fell into the forest, then the deer will find it. I’m sure by morning -”

“ _I’ll_ find it. It’s my problem, anyway,” Kakashi says, scuffing his boots against the floorboards. Bringing Yamato here was a mistake. If he’d taken the time to consider his options, he could’ve settled on something - _anything!_ \- other than Konoha. He should’ve dragged Yamato straight back to the Nine-Tails; that’s what anyone else would’ve done. It’s what Kakashi did to himself. And yet he brought Yamato _here_ , to Gai, to the same place that the Nine-Tails sent _him_ many hundreds of years ago.

“What am I doing, Gai?” Kakashi mumbles, leaning back against the wall. He covers his eyes - one dark and one bright, both his and another’s - and slides down to the _engawa_ , resting his head on his knees. The rain fizzles as Gai turns through it, and his jumpsuit squeaks as he shuffles over; Kakashi doesn’t look up, but he feels Gai settle down beside him.

“I must admit, Rival, as happy as I am that you’re here, I was surprised to see you tonight. It’s been -”

“ _Two years_ , I know. But I - I can’t just turn up at her doorstep. It’s better if I don’t. Minato-sensei’s _dead_. They’re all…”

The wind swirls, washing a rainy mist over them. Gai, who burns with an eternal flame, doesn’t shiver, but his voice is oddly cool as he replies, “They were always going to die before us, Kakashi.”

“Not like this,” Kakashi says, although _like this_ has already happened, and it will happen again and again and again. “Not so young. It’s not _fair_.”

Gai lays his arm across Kakashi’s shoulders and slowly pulls him into a hug. As a being of fire, Gai is always warm, and sitting out here in the thunder-rain is no exception. His touch could incinerate Kakashi into nothing - and they both know it. Perhaps this is why Gai’s always been so gentle, or perhaps that’s just his way. The hug is - _nice_ \- for the briefest of moments, and then Gai ruins it by opening his mouth.

“That’s why you should go and see them!” he decides, half-striking a victory pose. Iridescent light sways around him like a candle-flame. He squeezes Kakashi’s shoulder so tight that Kakashi swears it starts to crack. “Treasure the time you’ve got!”

“I don’t _want_ time,” Kakashi snaps, pushing away. “I’ve never wanted it. Why won’t you just -”

The hand that isn’t crushing Kakashi’s shoulder swoops down to his face. For the wildest of moments, Kakashi thinks he’s about to be hit - that they’re about to spar, fist-fight, _magic_ -fight, challenge each other to a brawl up in the air - but then Gai lays his hand gently over the edge of Kakashi’s mask. He doesn’t try to tug the mask down - in fact, he doesn’t do anything, but Kakashi’s ever-cold face heats up all the same.

“Because I swore to never hurt you!” Gai declares, ruining whatever strange moment this is evolving into by shaking Kakashi’s shoulders. “You’re my Beloved Rival, my most Esteemed and Wonderful Friend! I promised you, lifetimes ago, that I would be there for you and I - I cannot imagine a life without you in it! I thought these feelings of mine were clear -”

“ _Loud_ and clear,” Kakashi grumbles, desperately looking anywhere but Gai’s stupid, earnest face. “You’ll wake Yamato.”

Gai quiets - for a second, at least, and then he clenches his fists as though overcome by some great passion and his voice rises as he rallies even the rain. “I know what you ask of me, Kakashi, but I truly believe that one day you will see that there’s joy to be found in our longevity and you’ll - !”

“ _Shhh_! I get it, all right? Our rivalry is eternal, whatever -”

“YES! OUR BOND IS -”

Birds scatter from the trees. Kakashi slaps his hand over Gai’s unstoppable mouth. “ _Gai_.”

They wait, watching each other with trepidation, as Yamato sighs in his sleep and rolls over, blankets shuffling around him. There’s not a creak from the floorboards or a burst of plant-life from the trees, so Kakashi lowers his hand to reveal Gai’s brilliant smile.

“I’m not going to see Kushina,” Kakashi says, hoping his glare dissuades Gai from pressing the issue. “No way. But if you _shut up_ , I guess I could crash on your couch tonight.”

It won’t kill the Nine-Tails to wait. Gai’s always going on about _character building_ anyway, so maybe the Nine-Tails can learn some patience in the meantime. Yamato would probably kick up a fuss if Kakashi was gone in the morning, anyway, and though Yamato's not Hashirama and never will be, his plant magic could prove a difficult adversary to outrun.

“You really don’t have to stay if you don’t want to, Rival,” Gai says, though his smile suggests he's thrilled. “Don’t make yourself uncomfortable on my behalf.”

Kakashi scoffs. “Don’t be ridiculous, you’re not that special. I'll stay, but the storm-shutters stay open,” he replies, all but daring him to argue.

Gai nods as easy as that. “Whatever you want.”

 _Not quite_ , Kakashi thinks, and the golden feather around his neck warms gently as he bids the rain away.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! All comments are appreciated :)
> 
> Written for the [naruto magic week](https://naruto-magic-week.tumblr.com/) over on tumblr. Prompt was "torn from the earth".


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